Edwin Blashfield

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Edwin Howland Blashfield (December 5, 1848 - October 12, 1936), an American artist, was born in New York City.

He was a pupil of Léon Joseph Florentin Bonnat in Paris beginning in 1867, and became (1888) a member of the National Academy of Design in New York. For some years a genre painter, he later turned to decorative work, where his academic background in painting and extensive travels to study fresco painting in Italy melded in work marked by rare delicacy and beauty of coloring.

Considered a leading muralist of the late 19th century, he painted mural decorations or created mosaics in a number of places associated with the American Renaissance period.

[edit] Selected commissions

• a dome in the manufacturer's building at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago
• the dome of the Main Reading Room of the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress
• the mosaic of Saint Matthew in St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington D.C.
• the Iowa State Capitol at Des Moines, Iowa
• the Minnesota State Capitol at St. Paul, Minnesota
• the Governor's office in Pierre, South Dakota
• the Wisconsin State Capitol at Madison, Wisconsin
• the federal courthouse in Baltimore
• the Mahoning County Court House, Youngstown, Ohio
• the Detroit Public Library
• the Elks Memorial Building, Chicago, Illinois
• the Appellate courthouse; grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel; and the Lawyers' Club in New York City
• the residences of WK Vanderbilt and Collis P. Huntington in New York
• the residence of George W. Drexel (son of Anthony J. Drexel) and the chancel dome of the Cathedral Church of the Savior in Philadelphia.

With his wife he wrote Italian Cities (1900) and edited Vasari's Lives of the Painters (1896), and was well known as a lecturer and writer on art. He became president of the Society of Mural Painters, and of the Society of American Artists.

His style is cited as an influence of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Jean-Paul Laurens, and Paul Baudr.

[edit] References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
• Cortissoz, Royal, introduction, The Works of Edwin Howland Blashfield, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1937

[edit] External links

• Morseburg Galleries. The American Renaissance: Edwin Blashfield
• Iowa State Capital mural "Westward". [1]